


Some people move on, not him

by Webtrinsic



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse of italics, Anger, B.A.R.F. | Binarily Augmented Retro Framing, Barely any Comfort, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Fear, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hallucinations, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Lost in space - Freeform, Medical Procedures, Nightmares, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Psychological Trauma, Punishment, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Starvation, Survivor Guilt, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Warning!, Whump, failure - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:02:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26065447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: He's in space with a woman he doesn't know, missing a child that he considers his own, and is wrought with a failure he will not let go unpunished. Peter although dead and a figment of his imagination watches and Tony is hesitant to move on even when the boy says it's okay.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Kudos: 35





	Some people move on, not him

**Author's Note:**

> WE DID IT FRIENDS, THIS IS MY 200 FIC ON MY ACCOUNT WOOO AND I JUST HAD TO MAKE IT THIS!!!
> 
> also im legit still crying over the batman trailer because its so comic accurate and I'm just dying I need it now

There is a hole in his chest that doesn’t compare to the hole in his heart at the loss of his kid. The pain is a welcome distraction from the decimation of the bright-eyed boy he’d come to consider his own flesh and blood. 

The arachnids small hands grasping for purchase on his form left a mark that’d forever be unwashable. His child had pleaded for safety, clung to him in a hug that Tony had never properly given him, and used his last words to apologize for reasons the man of Iron didn’t actually know.

The wound in his gut aches, the nanotech only keeping him sated for so long and it's another failure to add to the list. 

“You need to let me fix you,” a gravelly voice insists, and he goes not because he wants to, he has to with Friday working on some of the last of her power to entrap his legs and walk him to the table Nebula is gesturing towards.

A growing part of him wonders if it’s even worth it, why should he live when Peter didn’t get too? There is no maybe, he _would_ find Peter in some afterlife if there’s even such a thing, if there’s a place of punishment he would endure until he had the courage to crawl out from the depths and look the boy in the face and plead for forgiveness.

The logical part of his brain smacks him in the head, knowing all too well that the boy would have forgiven him without the decades of tortu- _justice,_ he seemingly already had, his last words had been an apology. There had been no resentment in his voice, just a timorous yet earnest determination.

The teen’s last act of life being a reassurance spoke volumes of his character, the youngest Avenger toppled the board even putting him above the righteous Steve. Tony had figured out a great many things on his time on earth, could possibly figure out a great many more if he didn’t die here in space, yet the one thing he’d never be able to understand was the teen’s want to be like him.

Tony didn’t quite believe his own death would be as commendable, he knew that was his thought process because he’d fallen into the same trap Peter had. Comparisons and hero worship seemingly bit them in the ass. There must be a special place in hell for Tony because he absolutely revelled in the adoration Peter looked at him with even when it'd killed him in the end. Adoration he’d never be looked at with again, not by Peter nor anyone else.

The table beneath him was cold, colder than the space inclosing on them from outside the ship. Cold enough his teeth barred and his hair rose, the not-heroes wound tearing further, blood pooling in the covered wound sloshing about and making his ribboned stomach turn. Blood rose and coated the inside of his throat forcing him to swallow it once more and send it back to the gaping abyss of his torso.

The taste of blood in his mouth was prevalent enough since the stab wound, he didn’t want to add more to the mix after he’d been rubbing his tongue raw by licking the drying flecks away from each and every crevice.

There is nothing intimate or cautious about the way Nebula gets him out of his tank top but he’s grateful she had the foresight to take it off rather than just pull it up. (Although he deserves to sit uncomfortably in a blood crusted shirt.) The second the nanobots recede the blood rushes beneath him, not dripping but pouring off of the table and sticking to his back. The suit still attached to his legs, _luckily?_ keeping his jeans clean as the woman above got to work.

Tony Stark did not scream or cry as he the inflamed pink flesh was cauterized, his cut organs sewn back together, the same organs being shifted in his body as Nebula was forced to unravel his intestines and feed them back into his near empty cavity.

His sweat pillowed his body as well as his blood, and he took each ounce of pain with an unmatched gratitude because he needed to hurt now so he couldn’t look back at himself later and claim his sin had delayed punishment from the start.

He needed to feel the physical admonishment of his failure. A failure felt across the cosmos because he did not only fail Peter, he failed the hundreds of people experiencing the same loss as he. Even when the parental ringing in his head claimed they could never feel the same pain as him when it came to loss because he lost _Peter Parker_ of all people.

And when, _if_ , he got back to his merciless planet. To his dying, weak, and utterly small, seemingly _insignificant_ planet in the grand scheme of things. If that bastard Rogers was still alive he would feel his fury.  He would feel the rage of his broken promise. They were not together in the end because it was him and them who left him behind _broken_ in the snow, freezing and angered at his rightful disagreement at their betrayal.

He lied. God’s righteous man had lied to his face, not entirely tearing him from his nightmare, _ no, _ his vision of them all dying and him being the last person standing. He’d only helped it come to fruition by not being there with him while forcing him to watch and hold one of the only people that truly mattered to him now die.

Tony didn’t want to be the monster he had always saw himself as, _now_ he wanted to see Roger’s face in the wake of this failure, and that is the only reason he hoped the man had survived so he could _eviscerate_ him with words and wipe the man’s seemingly all knowingness right out of his head.

A good man Steve seemingly may be but Tony was not and had no reason to pretend now that his ward was no longer at his side. He had held a child, _his child_ , as he died and Tony blamed Thanos that he did not die with him. And if those who were dusted had been random, well Tony was not surprised he’d drawn the short end of the stick, the short end being surviving because in the end it was just...no worse than dying. 

He was a survivor that did not want to survive because he had nothing to survive for, and now that he had it, he had Pepper and Peter, his best friend Rhodey and Happy all in his grasp, he was alone and his child was gone and their fates were unknown. Except like the first time he still may very well perish in the cold with another who he did not truly know who’d had their hands in his chest forcing him to breathe stilted air that only cramped his lungs further.

There is barely any water or food, the resources apparently having been recently consumed and in a large amount. An amount that reminded Tony of the hassles of having lived with heroes with metabolisms all too much, but it’d never been bothersome when it’d been Peter because the teen had always been all too courteous. Cautious of overstaying his welcome when Tony just wanted him to feel at home.

Tony knew his grief was all too strong when even the thought of food brought him back to his child. But  _ it _ like every other horrid experience that lived in his mind refused to _not_ sit and settle in the forefront, willing him to live it again and again until he made peace with the fact that it was his existence. 

There were things to be done, things that could be fixed, things that could potentially let them return home if Nebula happened to know where his planet might be. She could know but there was no telling even if they managed to fix the ship they'd get there, time liked to bite and it could lock its jaw and by the time they reached their destination they could be decayed corpses or unsavable bags of bones.

The only bright side of that would be Roger's having to fish out his corpse.

* * *

He leaves Pepper a message unaware if she too is dust. Whether it be hope or intuition that tells him she is alive, it could still only be his frazzled brain. The lack of oxygen getting of him, making his fingers border from pinching simmers to numb inaction. 

His audience is silent after however many uncounted days he’s been drifting. The time out of his reach while maneagle and memorable only because of the lapse of emotions acting like tally’s on his imprisonment.

When his anger couldn’t be expressed properly in the cramped quarters it evaporated into sorrow. The tears are unhelpful for his severe case of dehydration which Nebula also chastises him for. 

He doesn’t say anything back in turn, ready to die because there is nothing else for him to do. It’s a bright light he could nearly mistake for death that has him covering his eyes. There is a woman who certainly is not an angel in her Captain Americaesque suit.

When she brings him down to earth, a place he almost doesn’t want to walk on without Peter Parker there, he is quizzical but also not entirely surprised when he sees the super soldier that was once his best friend sprinting in his direction.

He gives the man his weight knowing it isn’t much and even if it was the man would be able to handle it. His hair is the opposite of Steve’s, greasy and flat while the blond’s is combed back and fluffy. It annoys him for no reason other than he’d always imagined their reunion differently. More or less reversed.

“I lost the kid,” escapes his lips before he knows that it is truly what is on his mind (It always is), even as his fiance is running into his arms that is always what comes first. The super soldier watches helplessly as if he wants to do more like give him an arm or even carry him inside but he knows his boundaries and takes a step back as they usher the inventor inside.

* * *

Again, it is not the exact image he had in mind when he sneers and snarls and watches the captain's face contort in the remorse he’d dreamed of in the vast vacuum of space when he was feeling particularly vengeful. 

_ “...That trumps what you need.” _ It’s like he waited years, and he truly had, to see something less than perfect from the supersoldier. It is in front of him as he lets his heart out, going so far as to put it in the man’s hand.

He misses his kid, he misses an earth where not everyone was wrought with loss, he misses the life he was just getting together before he went up into space, and he misses having Steve as a friend he could trust without having the second guess that decision.

It is the same three people who have always been there for him that try to bring him back to normal, and he says try because he knows they cannot see the images of Peter in his peripherals or in his dreams.

The therapist Happy keeps driving to him explains it is normal to hallucinate those that have been lost, there is nothing wrong with him; _in that aspect._

“It helps to talk to them,” he only ever talks to the Peter he sees when he is alone, when he wakes up and Pepper is making breakfast and Peter is curled in the chair at his bedside or when the teen is where he normally stands, at his elbow and helping him along as he messes with things he should be building but can’t help but destroy.

The new house he resides in is a cabin on a lake, one with enough rooms that should be filled that he no longer wants to. There is something wrong with having a child so soon after losing one, and something wrong with him having a child even when he’d finally wanted one, when he couldn’t even save the one entrusted to him.

He doesn’t want to hear another voice crying and feel another set of hands curling into his skin. Tony doesn’t know if he could handle the fear of dying in a life he brought onto this earth.

It feels like he is moving on and they call it healing but it's really not. There are people gone who shouldn’t be and there are happy memories that are now colder than ice and too warped and weighted to be thought of fondly.

He doesn’t want to forget, and he doesn’t want to become complicit to the agony he should be feeling for his failure, and he knows just what to do about it. 

* * *

There’s history to the tech that remains and would always remain unpleasant as he sets up the BARF system. His intervention with the work entangled in Stark Industries intellectual property agreements had been needed. He knew what the insane bastard had wanted to do with the tech, and it’s ironic that it is what he will be using it for now and his own set purpose as well.

When it was Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing it had been a weapon on the mind, psychological torture an understatment, it registered as a war crime. BARF on the other hand was a therapeutic experience, one he’d been slightly testing on himself with the memories of his parents final goodbye.

Today it does both, it only takes seconds for the planet Titan to materialize around him. Peter, Strange, Footloose, bug-chick, and Mr. Clean surrounded him. He starts there and lives their deaths, and can see his fear in his own eyes as he finally looks over his shoulder where Peter is standing, his arms out and his final moments playing out in the exact same way they did then.

He cannot stop the sob that foams from his mouth, as he watches again and again as his boy cries and dies in his arms. A mysterious apology is given again and again and at this point Tony can’t do anything more than accept it as stress and fatigue pull at his body.

He does this for weeks, months, his health deteriorating, ulcers tearing apart his weak stomach as he test his limits. Doing the whole battle over and over again as if he missed something, as if something could have been done to prevent what had happened.

He is sure when he realizes that he could have plucked the stones from it's casing he tears his vocal chords in half because there isn’t a sound that is let out as he writhes on the floor in flashes of dust and carnage that do not touch him but he feels all the same.

No _he’s_ sorry, he’s so fucking sorry that it chokes him and is killing him. 

He loses Peter to the point he envies how Doctor Strange had done and saw the same damn thing and was still able to be unaffected. That is because he did not have his child there with him, and did not lose his child either. He does this enough times it feels up there with the man’s probabilities.

His three, not four, this Peter in his peripheral looking up at him with worried eyes is not here, and can’t act surprised because if he is a figment of his imagination he already knows he’s been rubbing his emotions raw, are worried about him. 

A sick part of him tells him he imagines Peter this way because he misses the boy’s concern for him, and it isn’t fair because Peter had died with that concern and Tony never got to apologize in turn.  Something tells him he’s about halfway there in understanding Spider-Man’s apology, but there is more to it that feels personal for the boy himself, and even while dead he will not reap the boy of his privacy.

They find him half-dead, drunk, and malnourished on the floor, blood pouring from his lips and he is taken to the hospital immediately.  Tony is drugged and broken, wrist and ankles cuffed to the hospital bed beneath him that is a stark contrast to the table on ‘The Milano’, Pepper is at his side, something on her mind.

She’s rubbing his hand and the contact reminds him that their affection has been scattered, both in consistency and in energy and he wants to apologize for their awkwardness, and his contradicting actions and advances.

She gives him a soft smile and is as straight to the point as always, “I’m pregnant,”

Peter looks on with a smile in the chair at the corner of the room and Tony cries with a mixture of fear and happiness. He’s not moving on but he’ll keep moving forward, it’s what Peter would have wanted, and Tony thinks he owes him that at least.

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


End file.
